depressed the locking mechanism. The car beeped and small sidelights flashed, relieving the smothering darkness. As she set the knapsack and her handbag on the backseat and slid behind the wheel, Sara was abruptly glad she’d decided against living in the house.
The last thing she needed was to sit alone at night in an isolated country house, turning slowly into a comfortably well-off, overorga-nized, lonely spinster.
Five
An hour later, after eating takeout, then showering and changing into soft track pants and a camisole, Sara sat down and began to sift through the week’s papers. She had two national tabloids and the local paper delivered, enough editorial to see her through the week and fill her evenings.
Her gaze caught on an advertisement in the world news section of one of the tabloids and she frowned. This was where she’d seen that particular arrangement of letters in the code book, not in the puzzle section, but in an advertisement, and not once, but several times.
The ad was for a photographic restoration service. The letters ACE leaped out at her.
She stared at the advertisement, then transferred her gaze to the knapsack, which she’d placed on the coffee table. The camera inside hadn’t contained any film. If there had been a film, someone had taken it out, but she didn’t think that it had been her father. Ben Fischer had been meticulous. If he had gotten the film developed, she would have found the prints and the negatives when she had sorted through the family photos. If there had been something sensitive or unpleasant about the photos, he would have stored both the photos and the negatives with the other items that had been hidden in the attic. Anyway, from the way the camera and the knapsack had been stuffed in the hidey-hole in the attic, she had the distinct impression that Ben Fischer hadn’t taken the time to do anything but hide the items.
Maybe there was no missing film—but the idea that there could be was tantalizing, and the letters Todd had scrawled on the side of the film box added to the likelihood.
It was possible Todd had sent the film off to the ACE photographic service. It looked as though they specialized in restoring photographs, but it was possible they also did—or had once done—processing. After almost twenty-five years it was a stretch to expect that any processing firm would have retained prints of work that had never been paid for and collected. The negatives, if they had reached ACE at all, would most likely have been destroyed by now.
Putting the newspaper down, she walked out to the kitchen and made coffee. Carrying her mug back into the sitting room, she switched the television on and flicked through the channels until she found a popular current-affairs program. A few minutes later, unable to concentrate on the disintegrating politics of the Middle East, she set the mug down and picked up the phone, which was sitting on a side table. She stared at the ad. It had been published in both of the tabloids, which meant the firm must be on a sound financial footing to afford the advertising bills. It was a Washington, D.C., number.
She hesitated for long minutes. Steve had told her to keep her nose out of the whole affair. She knew how dangerous the situation was, or had been. Alex Lopez was still on the loose, but the thought that he could be a threat to her in Shreveport was remote. And what harm could there be in ringing to enquire about a lost roll of film? At this time of night, she didn’t expect to reach a person, just an answering service. She would leave a message and wait to see if they called back.
She dialed and, when she got a disconnect signal, replaced the receiver. She checked the number and dialed again, just in case she had hit a wrong number. When the disconnect tone beeped in her ear again, she gave up. It was possible the number had been misprinted. Whatever. For the moment that avenue was gone.
Rummaging in her purse, she took out her cell phone, found Steve’s number, then hesitated, staring at a cheerful grouping of photographs on an armoire. There were old-fashioned shots of her parents, and Uncle Todd and Aunt Eleanor before they’d had children. Baby shots of both her and Steve. Steve at age eight, proudly hoisting the first fish he had ever caught; herself playing the piano, her head turning as she grinned, caught in a beam of sunlight shafting through French doors. The shot created an impression of time caught and held, as if that moment still lived.
But if she had learned one thing it was that she couldn’t turn back the clock. She wasn’t a child anymore, and neither was Steve. Both his parents and hers had died and now, with the exception of some distant cousins in Albuquerque, they were all that was left of the Fischer family.
She dialed Steve’s number. She wasn’t supposed to know it. He had broken the rules giving it to her, but she had agreed to use it in emergencies only, and on the proviso that she didn’t keep any records of the call on her phone.
Steve picked up almost immediately. The first thing he wanted to know was if anything had gone wrong. Swallowing a rush of emotion at just hearing his voice, she told him about the knapsack and its contents.
“You recognized the underwater camera?”
“Yes.” She had only used it once, but she wasn’t likely to forget. That day in the pool had been one of the last times she had seen Todd alive.
“In that case, Bayard should definitely see it. We wondered what had happened to the camera. Monteith got the film. I found the negatives and the prints he’d had developed. I assumed Monteith had tossed the camera.”
Monteith had been Admiral Monteith, the naval officer who had ordered the controversial mission. In order to protect himself, Monteith had hidden conclusive evidence that the divers and the charter boat operator, who had located the wreck of the Nordika, had been murdered.
“Damn…” Steve’s voice had faded to a mumble, as if he was holding the phone away from his face.
She could hear his wife, Taylor, in the background, his murmured, “It’s okay, honey.”
He came back on the line. “I want Dad’s things, but Bayard’s going to need to see them first. He’s not with the FBI anymore. He’s working with Saunders at the ODNI, but I know he still has the case.”
“I’ve got his home number. He gave it to me at Dad’s funeral.”
He gave her Bayard’s office and cell phone numbers, just in case she couldn’t reach him at home. She wrote the numbers down, then repeated them back. The ODNI was the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversaw the entire intelligence community. Bayard had previously been a highflier in the FBI. She had no doubt that his move had been upward.
“Any problems?”
Sara’s fingers tightened on the receiver, the invisible threads that held them together as a family suddenly pulling almost painfully tight.
The urge to tell him about the unsettling moment of déjà vu was briefly powerful enough that she almost gave in to it. Two solid reasons stopped her. As a close family member, Steve knew about her past problems. He had always been protective and sympathetic, but she doubted he would buy into either her past-life memories or the paranoia. Secondly, she was reluctant to upset him with any further links to a past that had already consumed enough of his life. After years of living a solitary existence hunting his father’s killers, he finally had a chance at a normal life, and he was happy. “No, no problems. How’s the baby project?”
She could almost feel his grin. “You’d better talk to Taylor.”
Taylor came on the line. Sara hadn’t had much time to get to know Steve’s wife, but in the short time they had spent
